


What Comes For Us All

by Willowingends



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Between Episodes, Canon Compliant, Canon Related, Canon-Typical The End Content (The Magnus Archives), Gen, Pre-Apocalypse, Spoilers for The Magnus Archives Season 5, The End Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-27 21:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30129348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowingends/pseuds/Willowingends
Summary: The End has always approached. Relentless, steady, the fate for all things that walk the earth. Now it swells, now it waits, and Nathaniel is not alone as it approaches.
Relationships: Oliver Banks & Nathaniel Thorp
Kudos: 4





	What Comes For Us All

For as long as he had wandered the world, Nathaniel had wandered it alone. As a mortal he had not held himself apart, but he had never found himself a family. He had never found himself a companion. Why weigh yourself down with those who would only drag you down? Why tie yourself to someplace you would only end up fleeing. As something else, he had no choice but to be lonely. Being lonely kept him from being distracted from the black veins of the world. Some were thicker than others, those were the ones he avoided. The lines were made for them. They made it all too easy to see who would die where. Who would be given enough time to attempt to gamble for their life, to gamble his away. 

They always lost. It was just the way of the games they chose. 

But now it was different. The dark threads of death overwhelmed, they ate everything, rested across every building, caught up every human. Every animal. Everything that was afraid of the end that came for them all. It surrounded them all in an inky blackness that he drifted through without issue. Humans spotted the road, their faces frozen in fear as they looked upwards, and none of them had the link that would allow him to win his freedom in a lucky loss. They were all doomed to die without any chance to escape. 

Nathaniel realized in that moment of despair, that he was not alone. 

He had known for centuries that he was not the only face of death that wandered the earth. Endlessly searching for a foolish person unlucky enough to take the burden from their shoulders, he had often ran across others like him. Ageless skulls staring out of shadows, warning each other off from their chosen victims. But this one was different. This one was a man.

This one was alive. 

The black tendrils writhed around him it was true, but none of them touched him. The dark-skinned man’s eyes moved over the signs of death with a mere disinterest. There was a tightness around them though, and his lips were pulled into an endlessly mournful expression. There was resignment there as well, and as he walked, death made way for him. He raised his eyes and they widened just a fraction before returning to their feigned disinterest.

“Nathaniel Thorpe.” His voice was smooth, even, unsurprised. And Nathaniel found that he knew the man’s name as well and was just as unsurprised.

“Oliver Banks.”

The man’s lips twitched up just slightly, a look of what could almost pass as humor coming to him. “Yes, I suppose that is the last name I will be known as, isn’t it?” The words were almost a whisper and yet they carried across the emptiness with ease. And Nathaniel felt as though he knew exactly what he meant. Oliver extended a hand, gesturing for Nathaniel to join him. “Let’s find somewhere to watch.”

Silence filled the space of the other London, not even their footsteps broke through the hazy of silence that surrounded them. With them together, the black tendrils seemed to twist and twitch away from them, unwilling to touch the two that death had already claimed but had not taken. It was the tantalizing, teasing peace that Nathaniel had come to envy when once he had feared it. But it didn’t appear as though Oliver felt anything at all for the black tendrils except distaste and acceptance. In a moment or perhaps after years, they stood before a familiar building. An old building that beat with no heart, that held so many tendrils reaching into and out of its halls. Nathaniel had come here once, he believed. He had spoke, watching as the letters were given life by a hand not his own. Watched as his story was taken and claimed. 

He turned his eyes to Oliver Banks, but the man’s eyes were focused on the building. “He really thinks he will escape it.” There’s a moment then when his eyes go blank. Not hollow, not unseeing, but blank. He tilted his head, a smile blooming across his face. Confident, delighted, a predator that knows its prey is reaching the end of it’s rope. “He’ll learn the same lesson you have, the same lesson everything learns. It all ends.”

Then Oliver’s face turns sorrowful, his face falling again into that resigned expression. “Are you prepared Nathaniel? Are you finally ready?”

Slowly, Nathaniel inclined his head. He had been wandering the world for decades. If the Ceaseless Watcher’s fear was what ushered in his final rest, then he wished it all the luck in the world. He let his hands rest against the blood soaked pants of his uniform. He tilted his head back, staring at the building that was attempting to rise from all the black tendrils, the blinking light that stared out at them, and smiled. When he turned his head, Oliver was gone, and Nathaniel understood. 

All things came to an end after all. 


End file.
